Sci fi design - how to design that stuff ?
polycounter lvl 12
Hey guys recently I got into making hats for new Unreal Tournament. I feel that I can model, bake and texture. I struggle with concepting. I know it's really hard topic and some people work as a concept artists full time so it's not something you can just pick up in matter of days. I would like to ask you how to work on that skill though.
You can find my work for UT here: https://forums.unrealtournament.com/showthread.php?15429-MrOneTwo-s-cosmetics
I just don't know how to work on sci fi stuff without trying random shit until it sticks (it usually doesn't stick ... like ever). Should I just mimic work of others until I build enough templates in my head?
You can find my work for UT here: https://forums.unrealtournament.com/showthread.php?15429-MrOneTwo-s-cosmetics
I just don't know how to work on sci fi stuff without trying random shit until it sticks (it usually doesn't stick ... like ever). Should I just mimic work of others until I build enough templates in my head?
Replies
Seriously though - it depends on the back story of the 'world' you're designing for. And if it doesn't exist, make it up. Back story will help enormously - and - give yourself freedom to experiment with designs that look great but don't work for practical reasons, then dial them down until they do work.
Look at nature and research design movements of the past. You'll learn how to generate hundreds of shapes/ideas and quickly pick which ones are worth developing. Don't just look at game stuff, or you'll just regurgitate what's already out there.
Scott Robertson
Feng Zhu
Harald Belker
Ron Cobb
... all worth a look.
Also check out the Styles that inspire and motivates you thread here on PC.
Unless you genuinely want to get better at concepting and design versus just straight up being a 3d artist, don't design things yourself.
Copy designs you like, mix and match, photobash concepts if you have too, but the great sci fi designs you probably thing of when you think "hmm i want to make a cool sci fi X" probably took them years of training, and hours actually designing concepts.
Unless you have the luxury of committing that time into a design its probably not going to turn out the way you want it
For instance, say this was an inspiring concept to you
And you where thinking "i'd love to make a sci fi hallway like that, but how do i design something that cool"
Sure you could reverse engineer the concept and figure out where they got inspiration from, it looks submarine-esc / clean militarian.
Or you can just make an environment based off the concept, because one things for sure, the design works, your personal taste can attest to that, and if the design works and your competent at modeling and texturing, boom you have a solid folio piece (not sure what your ambitions are, or if they include building a folio)
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so you are right in the sense you should probably mimic others works for now, practice what other advice people give you in this thread, i know i will (i suck at design, also trying to get better)
That being said, that was a realization situational to me, my current skill set and the way i work, i'm completely happy for anyone to tell you not to follow my advice.
The most important aspect is making your design believable and theres no shortcut to that.
Build things that would (more or less) work. Think about how things interact and operate.
How would the floor be layered ? Are these corners really needed ? Whats the function of this piece and how would it look to achieve that ?
Alien, Oddyssey 2001 and Star Wars are some of the best recieved Sci-Fi movies, because they build their props with a real foundation, making them authentic not just random.
Form follows function, and it will still do so in the future. So most of the future industrial objects will not look too different from now.
Star wars has rather believable planets with each their own architecture based on human cultures, showing a truly new and believable world and making much of its success.
Mass Effect has one style going through all of its universe. Its the epitome of sci-fi expectations. If you think about sci-fi (you gather all patterns associated with sci-fi and your brain averages them together) you get pretty much exactly Mass Effect.
If you want to achieve the "sci-fi" look, then Mass effect is a great inspiration, but this is not greatness. In real life things are built by different manufacturers and mostly do not look uniform too. (In Mass Effect nearly everything follows one design line which is very unrealistic)
Generic sci-fi kit: Diagonal lines, Holograms, single colors (Blue, Orange, Green etc), clean shapes, minimalism, pentagons, hexagons, grids , cold tones
Start with real life, youll notice theres often more sci-fi looking stuff in reality than in sci-fi.
Also chose the right fonts, fonts convey a lot of atmosphere and are about 3x stronger than any other visual element. It often only needs some subtle touches to convey a setting.
I go into my workshop, and I stack powertools on each other until I see an interesting shape or pattern.
And I run with that.
But yeah, complex shapes (or simple depending on if you're going for a society that abstracted everything), repetition, usually a lot of metal, hard-surface, certain shapes.
Just look at a particular sci-fi enviro that you like and literally break it down into simple shapes and color patterns. Analyze what makes those forms and textures appealing when put together, notice things that are carried over from one piece to the next.
Dues Ex Human Revolution had a lot o' yellows as an example, since it was trying to go for a more Renaissance-inspired future related to old paintings and artwork from history; where as it's hard for me to separate thinking about Mass Effect without thinking about a lot of blues and oranges, as well as clean white enviro's with spot color decals.
Aliens: retro 80s into the future, with a shit load of wires, white padding, and green computer font. Cigarettes and coffee everywhere.